With ‘innovation’ at the heart of its motto, Oakgrove is the first school nationally to invest in a new TinyLineMarker Sport robot to paint its grass sporting pitches. The robot, officially named ‘Oakey’ by an Oakgrove student, uses in-built GPS technology to recognise and mark out pitch templates, which are input beforehand by ground staff on a tablet.

“Oakey is a fun and fitting name for the robot and was chosen by Ethan, one of our Year 8 students following a naming competition”

Oakgrove’s Grounds Maintenance Manager and horticulturist Bill Malins added:

“Our school’s pitches are not only used by students, but are played on regularly by local community sporting clubs. To meet a growing increase in demand, the school needed to find a fast, labour saving and economical way to line-mark pitches.

“An on-site demonstration of the TinyLineMarker Sport by line marking solutions company Rigby Taylor, showed how easy it is to create pitch templates for football, rugby and athletics using a tablet that is also supplied. The robot was able to mark a pitch within an amazing accuracy of 5-10mm and overmark another within 20 minutes. The TinyLineMarker Sport can be programmed to just mark out the number of pitches needed on a particular day and, if a pitch is required at short notice, the grass can be mowed as the robot follows on.”

https://tinymobilerobots.com/field-marking-robot/cases/field-paint-marker-for-school-sports/